Results: Text (15) Images (0)

Filtered by:

The Medusa-like Siouxsie Sioux, who fronted her own band, Siouxsie and the Banshees, is closely identified with 1970s British punk and the post-punk era. Gleefully subverting convention and with an inescapably dark aesthetic, forbidden worlds of sex and fetishism were crossed with theatrical display in a wardrobe that was crowned by the graphic beauty of a pale face with exaggerated kohl eyes, red lips, and savage spikes of dark hair. Fashion has continued to embrace the theme of subversion and m

This article discusses the origins and history of fetish fashions (and gives an explanation of forms and functions) from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Beginning with late nineteenth-century Paris, when these forms came into play, it tracks the development through modernist culture and into the postmodern culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, noting the similar cultural conditions of gender instabilities and roles. It explains how fetish f

Each subculture member has individual lived body experiences, which collectively create the generalizations about the subculture’s identity. These generalizations are then further extended to collective ideas about identity regarding the individual member, the specific subculture, and the entirety of all subcultures to some degree. The subcultural body becomes an amalgam of experiences—for example, piercings, tattoos, spiky hair, and propensity toward pain. Furthermore, each subculture has unwrit

While it may seem contrary to the individualistic nature of subcultures, these groups have style guidelines expected by members. Subcultural groups subtly and visually communicate acceptable dress and styles to current and future members, as well as to outsiders and posers (i.e., individuals who purposefully mimic subcultural dress). Accordingly, Ted Polhemus and Lynn Proctor (1978) state:
The dress code of a social group prescribes limits, not absolute uniformity. To suggest that social identity

Routine makes drudgery of beauty care and the upkeep of the wardrobe. Horror at the depreciation that all living growth entails will arouse in certain frigid or frustrated women a horror of life itself; they endeavour to preserve themselves as others preserve furniture or canned food. This negative obstinacy makes them enemies of their own existence … good meals spoil the figure, wine injures the complexion, too much smiling brings wrinkles, the sun damages the skin, sleep makes one dull, work we

As a music-based subculture, Goth and its gendered meanings call for an analysis of how gender is represented in Gothic music and the subcultural music press. However, there is a crucial difference between the self-representations of individual Goths in interviews or Internet forums, on the one hand, and the mediated, formally published sonic, textual and visual representations in Goth music and media, on the other hand. There exist different cultural fields in or through which the Gothic subcult